10/18/05 Big Fish In A Small Pond or She Made Me Stupid

As I write these words my body is in pain and my mind is a little messed-up.

This weekend was the long rumored Friction reunion show. In the past, when I was in Lewistown, if I went out to one of the local dives I could always count on being recognized by someone nostalgic for the carefree days of their youth.

“Hey, weren’t you in Friction? What happened to you guys? You guys rocked! Are you still beatin’ them skins?”

Usually the gentleman saying this would have only recently cut off his mullet in favor of a grunge-goatee and a baseball cap with a drag racing logo plastered on the front. I knew these people were trying to be nice, but it still annoyed me. That part of my life was fun when it was happening, but it was long past, and I had moved on to more interesting pastures. Plus once you crawl out of the swamp, the big fish in a little pond syndrome seems a bit embarrassing.

When Jon Mertz, Friction’s bass player and a lifelong friend, asked me about doing a reunion show I was very skeptical. It had been ten years since I had played drums, and I wasn’t in any hurry to experience the social dynamics of being in the group.

I was also concerned because I had heard that Craig, the band’s singer, and Jim, the second guitarist, had become serious Christians. They were the same two that hastened the band’s demise with their drug and alcohol problems. Knowing what headaches they caused as addicts, I shuddered to think what they might be capable of as evangelicals.

When Jon first brought up the idea the other guys hadn’t signed on yet, so I didn’t take it too seriously. But as months passed, not only did the others agree to do it, they were enthused and excited about the project. Although I was not eager to relive past glories, when you are in a band other people depend on you. Seeing how much it meant to them, I didn’t want to be the fly in the ointment, so I agreed to do a rehearsal and see how it went.

At the rehearsal everyone was on their best behavior and happy to see each other. With Craig, there was no sign of the Jesus thing, and Jim kept it to himself. I got through the rehearsal without having a heart attack from the drumming, and really had fun hanging out with the old gang. Also, I had forgotten just how good Friction’s music was.

Sometimes in New York City I get sick of the spoiled brats who play artist while living off their parent’s wealth. It is something of a relief to spend time with working class guys who had nothing handed to them and who know how to work for a living.

After the first meeting we managed to get another four or five rehearsals in over a period of about six months. As the weekend of the reunion show approached the first sign of what I was in for came when two days before the show I got word that all the tickets had sold out in a day and a half. Old fans were driving in from Colorado, Ohio, and other far-flung locales. All in order to relive their misspent youths for a night, I suspected. The local radio stations were playing our music and hyping the show, and the papers did full page stories on the event.

Lewistown is a small conservative town with a long-dying economy. And although situated in the heart of Pennsylvania, the town has a real Southern redneck streak running through it. The music people listen to in Lewistown is usually either country or heavy metal-pop. All of it shoved down their throats by corporate radio stations, all of it commercial.

Friction was the first band in the area to play original music. We also introduced the young folks to a host of new underground music by artists such as The Clash, Talking Heads, Sex Pistols, Gang Of Four, The Specials, and on and on.

The band became the only voice in the area to stand against conformity and to speak against racism, religious hegemony, and Reagan’s politics. Our shows quickly became drug-hazed expressions of frustration and rebellion for our young audiences. The police followed us everywhere we went. Club owners were torn between the money we brought in and the bad behavior of our fans, who seemed to destroy everything in their paths. Since those days Lewistown returned to its conformists ways while basking in the decaying shadow of church and Bush.

Heather is a big fan of Friction’s music and was excited by the unexpected opportunity to see the band perform, so she accompanied me to PA. for the performance. The night before the show we made the five-hour drive from New York to Lewistown. I had reserved a Jacuzzi suite at the local Super 8 Motel. In the morning we filled up the Jacuzzi and relaxed in the massaging pool while gazing out the picture window that provided a lovely view of purple mountain and valleys underneath bright blue autumn skies.

In the afternoon we drove further out into the sticks so I could buy some shoes from a little store run by an Amish family. Inside the store, the electricity came from energy generated by a little creek that ran through the back yard. The women wore blue and black work dresses and white bonnets, and kneeled while slipping shoes on and off people’s feet. The men, dressed in white shirts and black pants held up by heavy suspenders, ran back and forth carrying boxes of footwear.

As the 10PM performance time came closer I struggled to control the nervous tension that was swelling up throughout the day. I had a real concern as to whether I would have the stamina to get through the show. I wanted to control my energy and not blow it all in the first few songs, then suffer throughout the rest of the two-plus hour performance.

As the hour approached, Heather wanted to see the warm-up act so I dropped her off in front of the club with a word of warning concerning how rowdy people might get inside. The venue had no dressing room, and in hopes of keeping my cool I wanted to avoid the opening act and the crowd inside.

I saw the band’s old manager (and coke supplier) standing in front of the club. Although he once burned me for about fifteen grand in a business deal that turned out to be shady, I stood chatting with him as the warm-up band churned out Nirvana and Pearl Jam cover songs.

It soon became clear that this event was bringing every backwoods freak out of the woodwork. My conversation with the ex-manager was continually interrupted by a slightly retarded woman who was my neighbor in the trailer park when I was a kid.

“Caeser, did you’ens still live there when I had my second son? He’s big now. He’s about six feet tall,” she said raising her hand into the air to impress me with the height of her offspring.

I confessed that I couldn’t recall, trying to be polite, but still attempting to continue my conversation.

“They took one of the trailers away this week, now there’s only eleven,” she interrupted with lamebrain innocence. I don’t quite know how to responded to this one, so I stood with a dopey smile pasted on my mug, all the while telling myself ‘be nice, be nice.’

Soon two female friends from years gone by arrive with tickets in hand. The first is Debra. When I was in college we worked together at the Dominoes Pizza shop. She was the daughter of the owner of local car dealership, so it was thought she came from a little money. Her boyfriend was a backwoods yokel who would kick the shit out of her every week or two just to knock her off her high horse.

After we became friends we took a trip to New York to see David Bowie’s band Tin Machine. After the concert we went to a comedy club. When we walked in it was dead empty, so the host set us down at a table right in front of the stage, meaning that we were in the line of fire for every comedian honing his ‘working-the-crowd’ skills. Usually each comedian began his routine by asking us a few questions with the tone of voice one might expect from Henny Youngman in the Catskills.

Just to liven things up I told them we were newlyweds from Maine, visiting New York for our honeymoon. Wedding night jokes soon flooded every routine and at night’s end the club’s manager came out and congratulated us on our marital bliss.

Although Debra was an attractive woman, our relationship never became more sexual than a kiss on the cheek. She walked up and hugged me and said with an excited voice, “Caeser, don’t you remember me.”

“Of course, I do,” I replied.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, bringing her face too close to mine.

Chrissanne stood a few feet away with a patient smile on her face. Chrissanne stood at five-feet and ten-inches tall, and on this night her hair color was a light brown, although at any given time it could be blonde, red, or any other color in the rainbow. She came over and hugged me and stared straight into my eyes.

“I want to kiss you,” she said matter of factly.

“That can be arranged,” I answered.

Without missing a beat she gave me a short, firm kiss on the lips.

Chrissanne and I had a long history. When she first began following Friction she was a lanky teenager who already had grown to her impressive height. She dressed in outrageously sexy clothes and had a Betty Boop shyness that was charming to behold when coupled with her flagrant sexuality. Most people thought she was a little bit batty because of her ditzy demeanor, but most of those people weren’t bright enough to realize that really she was quite the intellectual.

In her late teens she became a Deadhead hippie and went through a couple of husbands, coming out of it all with a few kids that she now raised as a single mother.

“There is so much I want to tell you,” she cooed, rubbing her open palms against my chest. “I took up painting…and I’m going to school now,” she announced like a proud little girl.

I began to notice that there was a little competition between the two friends as to who might know me better, Deb moved back towards me bringing her face close to mine as she recapped her life over the last ten years.

“I never got out of Lewistown,” she said with a frown, “ My father died and a bunch of stuff happened. I got married and had two kids. Now I’m divorced.”

Feeling a little uncomfortable with the attention I backed away and sent the girls into the club saying that I would talk to them later in the night.

Sometimes I find crowds are more than I can handle and I was having mixed feelings about going inside, but the warm up band was finally vacating the stage so it was time for me to find my way to the stage. Inside it was packed with drunken people. It was like going to a class reunion where everyone you’ve known since childhood is there.

Everyone was very nice, but my social skills were just not up to the task at hand. Over and over again I apologized to people for not remembering them when reminded of some moment when our paths crossed in some distant past. First there was a girl I knew in grade school.

“Do you remember I used to come into your basement and watch you play,” she asked.

“Sure I do,” I assured her.

The burly man she is with has some connection to me that I can’t recall at all. A dark haired woman scolds me, “Here I am at that bar and you’re hurting my hand. Do you remember? “

“Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else?” I ask

“Caeser, I’m tripping on X and you’re playing head games with me,” she argued.

Robin came up to me and hugged me warmly. “The last time I saw you, you were standoffish,” she whines.

“I was just feeling shy,” I explain.

“Is that what it was?” she asks, cocking her head to the side.

I always had a soft spot for Robin. We went out a few times and her down-to-earth friendliness was always nice to be around.

“Is little sister coming,” I ask.

“Marnie, yeah she’s coming. The whole gang is coming,” she replies.

Leaving her I make my way through the thick crowd shaking hands like a politician. The people who greet me like an old friend, range from actual old friends, to people who look vaguely familiar, to ones who appear to be complete strangers. In the middle of the room I find Brian. He looks wasted out of his mind. He tells me a story I can’t quite follow, but it seems the management is trying to throw him out of the club and the night hasn’t even begun.

The stage sat in the corner at an angle. There is a double-door to the back parking lot located behind the drum kit. The crowd stood at the edge of the stage, and even at this early-hour most looked rowdy and drunk. I picked up the drumsticks, eager to get the show on the road.

Part of my drumming style was that I stood up while I played. Since I began playing again I had not attempted to do so, but I wanted to stand up once or twice during the evening just as a reminder of my old shtick. I had it all planned out that I would wait until the third song and stand for a short guitar solo, then again later in the set. My plan was to keep it short so I didn’t exhaust myself.

A few seconds before the first song started I sat down behind the drums. I felt like there was a wall between the audience and myself. I knew right then my plan was going into the garbage. The guitarist started the song and I rose to my feet and stood for the entire tune. From that position I could overlook the audience as I played. There was a wall of people twenty feet deep crammed against the stage.

In the days when I was a drummer I never made eye contact with audience members. As a singer in The Imperial Orgy, audience contact is paramount. Now instinctively, even standing behind the drum kit I found myself making eye contact with audience members. With the recognition, men raised their glasses into the air. Women tended to have a different reaction.

When the first song ended the audience roared. A woman and her daughter kept yelling to me from the stage’s edge as if they had something important to tell me. I went over to see what they wanted and the mother yelled, “My daughter says, ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???.”

I had no idea what she was saying so I smiled and nodded my head.

“Is that true,” she demanded.

I shrugged my shoulders and returned to the drum kit.

During the second song I peered across the crowd. Chrissanne was dancing and looking back with a sweet smile. Deb returns my glance with a mischievous grin. Robin danced with her arms raised in the air. Then to the right of the stage I spotted Marnie.

At one time Marnie was the apple of my eye. It had been many years since I last saw her, but she looked amazing. The passing years only made her look better and sexier. Although blue-eyed blondes are not usually my type, in my younger days I thought she was the best looking girl in town. Since I had last seen her at lot had happened in her life, but to look at her you would never have thought a day had passed.

She was a little light on the backside, but otherwise an incredible beauty. She still had the body of a teenager, her form was lean and tight, between the top of her jeans and her shirt her stomach was smooth and flat. Her breasts were just large enough to fire the imagination. The sight of her made me go a little crazy.

Between the second and third song I went to her and hugged her, “You look better than ever,” I whispered into her ear.

“Keep saying that,” she replied, “and you look really great yourself.”

When I first met Marnie she was a child of thirteen, but already looked like a woman. At that young age she followed Friction around, somehow getting into bars and wild late-night parties. With quiet and coyness, the little girl transformed herself into a woman of mysterious beauty.

We became friends during those days. She would come and spend evenings with me at my house. At the back door as she took her leave, long looks would pass between us, but we never shared so much as an innocent kiss. I was in a relationship and true to my partner, even though my heart had already fled with this young angel.

Years later she told a friend of hers that we had been sleeping together, even though I had never laid a finger on her. Her friend told my girlfriend causing untold troubles for me, and creating a rift that never quite healed.

Whatever innocence Marnie once had, as the years passed that innocence was lost. Rumors were whispered of her sexual exploits. Every guy in town claimed to have had her. Then one day she went to the hospital and gave birth to a boy. The unlikely story was that she kept the pregnancy a secret from everyone, even her family, until the day the child was born.

A year or two later I became single and tried to get her to go out with me, but it never worked out. I assumed she just wasn’t interested. Not long after, she married a police officer.

Years passed and she all but left my mind. Many women had come and gone and the past seemed very distant. Then about a year ago I called a Lewistown club to discuss a concert date, Robin was working there as a waitress and answered the phone. After a little chitchat I inquired, “How is your little sister doing?”

“She getting by, it’s been tough though,” she replied.

“Why, what’s going on,” I asked.

“I thought you knew. Troy, her husband, died of cancer.”

As it horrible as it seems, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps one day I would have an opportunity to see Marnie again. Now actually seeing her I felt excited and agitated. I think she could sense what I was feeling, and to tease me she would wave, blow kisses, and lick her lips seductively at me. It was truly maddening. She made me stupid like a nervous schoolboy.

Despite the fact that I was losing my cool over Marnie, throughout the set my stamina was buoyed by the energy from the audience. Between songs I paced back and forth behind the drum kit, unable to bring myself down from the heightened state of aggression I had reached.

The last song of the set was a tough one for me. It required a constant pounding on the floor tom with my right hand. I sat down until the final verse, during which the guitars dropped out, at which point I stood up and raised the volume level, pounding the drums as hard as I could.

When the song ended I grabbed my brown leather jacket and ran out the back door. Soon Debra came out and looked up at me with a naughty grin.

“So who do you want tonight, Chrissanne or me? “ she asked.

Only half joking I responded, “I want you both, of course,” as I pulled her hair back and kissed her neck.

As more people come out the door I snuck off and went to the front of the building where I met Jeff Gaines. Jeff is a folk singer who had a hit on the adult contemporary charts with an acoustic version of Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes. Signed to Elektra Records, he toured Europe with Tom Petty, and America with Melissa Ethridge. Jeff is a longtime Friction fan and drove in from Philly for the show.

A little later I returned to the back parking lot and rested against the side of a pickup truck. Soon Marnie came out and wrapped her arms around me. Taking her into my own arms I said, “I’m sorry about the events in your life.”

“Oh well, that’s life, “ she replied without emotion.

“You’re still the best looking woman in the room,” I teased.

She responded with a slow full kiss on my lips. Her body felt wonderful in my arms. Just then Jeff walked out the door, and seeing us in an embrace, turned away in embarrassment.

As we broke our kiss she whispered, “Take me away tonight. Anywhere you want.”

“I can’t tonight, but give me your number.”

She rolled her eyes disdainfully and shook her head.

“Caeser, take me tonight.” she said.

I dropped my eyes in frustration. I want her, but it just isn’t in the cards. One thing I know is that if you reject a woman, you usually don’t get another chance. She turns and walks away haughtily, like a small town princess with better things to do than waste time with me.

During the second set the audience seemed to be in even more of a frenzy. The ten-year old daughter of our guitarist Joe Martin, was standing at the edge of the stage. Suddenly a young man knocked her down and jumped on the stage and started dancing. Joe was understandably furious and pushed the guy off the stage.

A little later someone threw a beer bottle that shattered on the wall behind me. Soon after another one hit me in the middle of the chest. Brian snuck in the back door and began dancing behind me. Two security people ran across the stage and chased him out the door. The bedlam was becoming violent.

Throughout the set there was another woman who kept making eye contact with me. Her friend called me over to the edge of the stage and said, “This is Becky, she’s getting into you.” Trying to be polite I asked Becky, “Is this the first time you’ve seen Friction?”

She nodded her head without speaking. Feeling a bit awkward I excused myself and returned to the drum kit. As the night progressed Becky seemed to be increasingly intent on selling herself from the edge of the stage. Through sheer force of will her body seems to glow. Her white flesh swells and vibrates. Desire magically transforms her in a manner that is glorious to behold.

During the song Musical Chairs Marnie jumps onto the stage and starts dancing behind me. I kiss her on the cheek as I play. She is in her glory as all eyes are on locked her form.

During the encore Craig tells the audience he loves them for the tenth time. It all seems rather good-natured behavior for an old school punk band. We play three covers songs by the Talking Heads, David Bowie, and The Clash, as the audience sings along. Some seem to still have the same haircuts they did in the 80s.

“Do we still look as sexy as we did back then?” Craigs asks. For the first time the roar of approval was not quite what we might have hoped. “Maybe we weren’t even sexy then, just angry,” he responds.

As we came to the end, my body was wracked with pain and exhaustion. On the final note I ran outside trying to catch my breath. Someone came out and called me back in. “No more encores,” I thought in my head.

Inside it was a rock star moment. The crowd was reaching out their hands to the band members. I went to the edge of the stage and began shaking hands with people, I signed drumsticks, T-shirts, and photos, the women hugged and kissed us. A male friend of mine mocked me, holding out his arms and screaming in a high voice, “Oh Caeser kiss me.” I grabbed him and kissed him on the ear.

Heading back outside I rested against the pickup truck beside Jeff. People began to pour out the back door. In a row, Debra, Chrissanne and Marnie came out and headed towards me. As they circled me I felt like trouble was brewing so I backed away from the group. Debra cornered me by the doorway. She was drunk and aggressive, with her arm against the door blocking my way and her body against me she said, “Are you going with Chrissanne and I tonight?”

I apologized, explaining that I can’t tonight.

“You have my number, callme” she offers.

As I pull away Marnie comes up to me, “Do you want to be with that?” she hisses sarcastically in reference to Debra, “cause if you do, just let me know.”

I say, “No, but I have to be polite.”

Marnie pushed herself against me and I sat back on a guitar amp. She stroked my cock outside my jeans as she purred, “Take me somewhere tonight.”

“I can’t tonight,” I answered.

“Yes, tonight,” she insists.

“I can’t believe I’m saying no to you,” I moan, “I’ve been waiting fifteen years for you.” Her body is pressed against me, making me weak with desire. I want her so much that I feel sick inside.

“C’mon, what are you going to do with me,” She pleads.

The thought arises in my head that as I joke I should say, ‘marry you,’ but I catch the words before they come out of my mouth. The mere fact that the thought would come to my mind scares me. What the hell is this woman doing to me? In my mind I tell myself that she doesn’t have a lick of sense, it’s likely she’s never read a book, a year down the road I wouldn’t have a thing to say to her, but the arguments I make to myself are to no avail. At this moment I am twenty-two again and in my arms I hold the most beautiful girl in town, and nothing else matters. Her presence has unearthed some long-buried youthful folly. I am a fool before her. I feel as if I could fall into her like a dream.

Finally discouraged by my rejections she turns and walks away from me. Between turning down the threesome with Debra and Chrisanne, and passing up a long awaited chance to take Marnie, I feel half-deranged. My body aches from the drumming. I am exhausted, but my mind is wired. My emotions are raw.

The crowd was beginning to thin so I walked into the room. Becky comes up to me like a lady in waiting. I say, “Thanks for coming, I hope I see you again.”

Her face is emotionless, but her eyes reveal a trace of disappointment. She is a lovely woman. I feel like I am at a feast where the delicacies are free of charge, but I am not allowed to eat.

There is a strange air of emotion in the room. I am usually not the hugging type, but men who would normally never hug me, come up and embrace me without inhibition. I see Kit, a friend from early high school days. “No matter what, we go way back,” he says with a note of sadness in his voice.

Even Ron Boi, The Imperial Orgy’s first bass player, who usually calls me Caeser Stink and seems angry about the past, now embraces me with genuine emotion.

Robin comes up and hugs me then says, “Watch out for my little sister, she’s on the prowl.”

I’m not sure what I was trying to say, but I stammer, “she….she…”

As she walks away Robin turns back to me and asks, “Did I make you blush?”

I notice Marnie across the room. She’s like a butterfly flitting from man to man. Every man she speaks with tries to embrace her or get his hands on her body. She flirts for a minute then squirms away and goes to the next one. She’s got so much to offer, it’s hard to understand why she is so desperate for attention. Watching her brings the flavor of lead to the pit of my stomach.

I pass Karen Sue, a female buddy from grade school days. When I was in sixth grade, she was in eighth and seemed much wiser in the ways of the world. She looked out for me like an older sister. Even though I’ve barely spoken to her since grade school she says, “I love you.”

“You too,” I respond without thinking.

“I know you do,” she replies with a solemn understanding.

Love and emotion are thick in the air, but somehow it all seems a bit sad. Somehow the surface has been peeled back and we all became existentialist viewing life as a whole. Saying the things that usually remain unsaid. The love she expressed was the love of life and sweet memories of the past. Spoken with the knowledge that life passes by far too quickly, and that our shared experiences are what mean the most when death sums up the final tally.

As I look around the room I see the faces of the friends of my youth, their faces scarred with experience and worn with time. Most haven’t seen each other in many years. For tonight they once again taste the vitality of youth. So many have walked a rocky road and are still looking for something in life. The mixture of warm cheer and sadness is a bit heartbreaking.


I collect Heather and head for the hotel. I am wired and restless. We are expecting friends to come by for a late night party, but there is no alcohol to help me unwind. Heather is dressed in black knee-high boots, a short black skirt, and a gold blouse made of small metal links. Sitting on the couch with her feet on the coffee table and her knees in the air, I masturbate her. Before she comes, there is a knock at the door. Not taking the time to wash her fluids off my hands, I open the door and shake hands with my guests.

The first in is Robert L. Brown, a local filmmakers with a bizarre comedic outlook on the world. He once acted in my short film “ A Message From Satan.” With him is Gregg Specht. Gregg was one of the few people in our crew who had any business sense. His family made some money selling caffeine look-alike pill. Pills that appear to be prescription amphetamine, but are actually filled with caffeine and vitamins. As an adult he took over the business and took it legitimate, and then expanded to tanning salon equipment and products.

Soon Friction bassist Jon Mertz arrived with his girlfriend Erica. No one had any alcohol, but the rest shared a joint as we watched a video of the night’s performance. At about 3:30 AM my body began to ache and my mind was fading with exhaustion. There was also a sharp pain emerging in my chest.

When my guests leave I collapse on the bed expecting to fall into a deep sleep. Unfortunately my mind is too wired to sleep. I toss and turn into the morning hours. Visions of Marnie standing at the edge of the stage haunt my disoriented mind. Finally after 5AM I fell into a troubled sleep.

At 7:30 I awoke, my body still aching, and my chest filled with sharp intense pain. I am so exhausted I can’t think clearly about what I am experiencing. The chest pains begin to scare me. The anxiety makes it harder to think clearly. I ask Heather to get dressed and explain that I am going to the hospital. Still half asleep, we dress and head out of the hotel.

Outside it is a perfect fall morning. Puffy white clouds are suspended in blue skies. The mountains look like mirages. The entire panorama looks like a giant painting set against the horizon. Given that I fear I may be dying of a heart attack, nature’s beauty takes on a bitter vitality that my eyes try to absorb greedily.

We get into the Explorer and begin to drive. Somehow the car got locked into low 4-wheel drive and won’t come out. As we drive to the hospital the car rumbles and shakes. The noise heightens my anxiety. The whole thing is a surreal nightmare.

I walked into the hospital and explained my situation. Immediately they put me into a wheelchair and pushed me into the emergency room. They put me on a bed and a team of nurses swarmed around me. One took my blood pressure, another pasted stickers on my chest for an EKG, another stabbed a needle into my arm and drew blood, another put a plate behind my back, while another pulled up a large machine and x-rayed my chest, and yet another asked questions while writing on a clip board. It looked like a bad scene for ER. I felt like an old Buick being ravaged for parts in the junkyard. For the finale a nurse put an IV in my arm and injected me with drugs. A creepy, cold feeling, traveled up my arm as the saline entered my body.

Then suddenly they all disappeared and I was left alone waiting and wondering…for two hours. Fear of death is a horrible thing. My father faced death with such calm. The only complaint he ever uttered was once when he turned to my sister and asked, “Why does this dying have to be so hard?” The fear is like a bad acid trip. Colors become vivid and the air shakes. Usually it is the fear itself that kills you.


As the 2nd hour crawled to an end the pain in my chest began to subside and I became more concerned about the pain in my stomach from not eating. Finally the doctor came and said I was OK, I had just strained a muscle in my chest. Perhaps from being hit with a bottle I thought to myself.

Grateful to be alive, I left for New York feeling overwhelmed by the events of the last twenty-four hours. An hour into the drive I began to fall asleep so we pulled over by the Susquahanna River and took a nap. Afterwards the long ride home was made longer by an hour sitting in construction traffic. We arrived in New York at 10PM. Since the hour was late we threw my mattress on the floor and passed out.

In the morning I awoke to find that Heather was stroking my erect penis. Still exhausted and half-asleep, she mounted me like a jungle gym. I cleared my vision enough to see that she was wearing a T-shirt from the concert. It was black with a large white Friction logo in the middle of it. As she rode me the logo bounced in and out of my field of vision, Friction, Friction, Friction…

I closed my eyes to make it all go away. My life makes no sense to me. There is too much and too little. I can’t bring the picture into focus. I dread facing Monday. The incredible and exciting experiences that punctuate my life, also make the mundane existence of day-to-day life more meaningless.